Yeah that’s not great but not too surprising when it comes to the Irish DPA.
They are seemingly very corrupt. They pretty much refuse to fine any of the large US corporations like Facebook.
And while they have actually fined Facebook multiple times that’s because the rest of the EU (EDPB) forced them too. It wasn’t a willing decision on their part. They have also cried to the Irish government (or parliament) to get a new law that makes it possible to get the reporting party (I.E. normal EU citizens and NGOs) to pretty much sign a NDA regarding everything in the case.
Why are they like this? Why do they interpret the GDPR differently than the rest of the EU and coincidentally they interpret the law in Facebook’s favour?
I have no evidence but to me it seems extremely likely that they are directly bribed or more likely IMO is that Ireland wants to keep all the tax avoiding US companies in Ireland and they do this to keep them happy and when they get fined anyways they can blame the EU for the fines.
Oh and Ireland is still the one that’s actually issuing the fine, so they get to keep the money even when they were forced to do it.
On another note, I suspect that DPAs are more eager to fine when it’s something that’s done explicitly bad. Like refusing to delete data.